Various databases and tools exist for patent-related documents, such as those provided by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and foreign patent agencies. Other search tools also include MicroPatent™, PatBase™, and Delphion™. These search tools may permit users to search for patent-related documents using search terms and other criteria.
Traditional search tools, however, are often limited in their ability to search, filter, and analyze large numbers of patent-related documents. While traditional search tools may locate large numbers of patent-related documents responsive to a query, they do not provide an effective user interface for filtering and analyzing the patent-related documents to find documents of interest to a user. Traditional search tools also do not allow a user to search for particular patent drawings of patent documents, which may assist a user in finding relevant patent-related documents.
Further, existing patent-related document tools do not enable a user to verify if there is support for claim terms that are present in claims. For example, the Detailed Description of the patent-related document may use different terminology than a particular claim term. Although the claim term may not have literal support, it may have non-literal support in the form of term variants in the Detailed Description. Accordingly, there exists a need for improved search and analysis tools for patent-related documents.